DRIVERS TO PROTEST SOARING GAS PRICES.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

Like a runaway bull market, gasoline prices in the Los Angeles area continued their rapid rise on Thursday and in some cases jumped 10 cents from the previous day's level.

The sudden price surge, which saw the cost of a gallon of gas jump by 25 cents during the past 14 days, could last for at least two more weeks or possibly a bit longer, analysts and industry officials predicted.

A gallon of premium gasoline was selling for more than $1.70 a gallon and regular for more than $1.40 a gallon at a number of stations in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday, stunning market watchers and commuters alike.

Prices have been going up from 4 cents to 10 cents a day for the past two weeks, according to Auto California, a trade group that represents the state's service stations and repair shops.

``It looks like the largest increase in the shortest amount of time that we've ever had,'' said Susan Garfield, a spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission, which keeps tabs on production at the state's 13 refineries.

The situation is so frustrating that a coalition of community groups, including the Minorities for Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Free Cities, the Adoptive Families Foundation and Congress of Racial Equality today will stage a protest downtown.

Lowe Barry, pastor of the California Christian Center in Compton, said that the coalition will call for a federal investigation into the sudden price hike.

``We're going to lay out several recommendations for government regulation on gas price increases,'' he said.

But industry officials rounded up the usual suspects in doling out blame for the recent increases: a shrinking supply, increased demand because of the holidays, production stoppages at refineries in Northern and Southern California and an OPEC production cutback that started Thursday.

Several companies, including the region's leading retailer, Atlantic Richfield Co., are now restricting the amount of gasoline they will sell to dealers.

For the next month, Arco dealers will only receive the same amount of gas they sold in March instead of being able to buy however much they think they can sell, according to Paul Langland, a spokesman at Arco Products Co., the big refinery's marketing arm.

Arco's gasoline production was recently interrupted several times because of equipment problems at its refinery in Carson. As a result, the refinery could not produce gasoline for one week.

``We found ourselves . . . short on gasoline. We're hoping to make it to the end of the month without running out of gasoline to sell to our stations,'' Langland said.

To help ease the shortage, Arco is bringing gasoline in from the Gulf Coast on tanker ships. He declined to say how much fuel the company was importing.

Others, though, doubt that supplies had slipped enough to cause such a big price spike.

``Current gasoline production levels will not continue to support the high prices consumers have been paying at the pump,'' Energy Commission Chairman William J. Keese said in a statement earlier this week.

The commission's assessment of state supplies found that March's production of 880,000 barrels per day was 96 percent of normal for the month.

And 12 of the state's 13 refiners are producing gasoline for the state's passenger vehicles.

``This marker has been fueled by speculation during tight supplies over the past two weeks, and consumers are feeling the pinch,'' Keese said.

Will Woods, Auto California's executive director, said that distributors who sell to independents worried about severe shortages, and this contributed to the run-up.

``They basically bid up the price on the spot market,'' he said. ``It's basically an overreaction to conditions that may result from the factors in the marketplace.''

Prices could start sliding back down in about two weeks, Woods said.

EXPLOSIVE

Gas prices in Los Angeles were flat from November to mid-March, and then have shot up 20 percent in two weeks.

$1.50

$1.41

1.40

1.30

1.20

$1.16

1.10

SOURCE: Automobile Club of Southern California 

CAPTION(S):

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Chart: EXPLOSIVE (See text)